


The Best Kind

by paradisecity



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-16
Updated: 2005-10-16
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradisecity/pseuds/paradisecity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie argues luck, Larry refuses to play poker, and there may be more than meets the eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Kind

"It's completely val--"

"Luck, Charles. _Luck._ Perhaps the least scientific of the myriad of unscientific tenets humans have deluded themselves into believing since the dawn of humanity..." It was just here, he'd just seen it. It had come in the mail last...Tuesday? Thursday? Sometime last week and he'd set it aside because he'd knew he'd want -- with the mail, then. Where was the mail?

Oh, yes. With the sundial -- he and Charlie had been comparing. He really needed to put that aside before it got broken. Or before he forgot where he'd put it. But where to put it so that it was out of harm's way but that he'd still remember to take it home and put in it in its proper place later?

Hmm. He'd been looking for something before he got to the sundial. What had it been?

"It's mathematically valid, Larry. A flipped coin will land heads up 51% of the time. American, Canadian, Mexican, European, all of them if they're evenly balanced. It's not a matter of weight or composite components or anything else. It's simply mathematical proof that luck exists."

"Granting the premise -- which I still believe to be flawed --" but Charlie already knew that; they'd had this conversation likely hundreds of times since they'd become friends. In fact, if Larry's recollections were accurate, this was how they'd become friends initially. He'd overheard an affable yet completely flawed justification of Schrödinger's paradox on the basis of luck and wandered over to hear more. He was already figuring odds on who the charmingly erroneous graduate student belonged to only to find that it had, of course, been Charlie. It didn't take Larry long to realize that Charlie had been so fascinated with preoperational thinking as a child that he'd never let go of what was, currently, one of the most trite and misunderstood tenets of modern quantum physics and that on a completely faulty premise.

Or maybe it was the concrete stage Larry was thinking of. He'd always had trouble remembering Piaget properly.

"--it's a long way from 'luck exists' to 'luck is the sole and complete justification for the state of Schrödinger's cat when the hypothetical box is opened.'"

"Not as long as you might think. Considering all the possible explanations..."

Ah, the mail. That's what it was. He found the week's pile of mail -- two, he amended, sorting through them,three? Certainly he'd gone through his mail more recently than that -- pushed to the corner of the desk, weighted down by his favorite sundial. It was clearly out of place -- that's right, he and Charlie had been comparing. He really ought to remember to put that away before he forgot about it.

He flipped through the pile -- "Heisenberg's uncertainty," Charlie was saying -- looking for the flyer on the faculty/student poker tournament in the student union. He loved playing poker with Charlie: when Charlie wasn't counting cards, he was a truly abysmal player, no poker face to speak of. Larry, surprisingly, found himself faring much better. It wasn't that he was good -- Fleinhardt, Fleinhardt, American Institute of Physics, Applied Physics Letters, Fleinhart, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality -- the D, the D, the D makes all the difference because one would assume that, aside from the obvious, physics and sex don't have much commonality and perhaps the mail should be routed to the appropriate Fleinhar(d)t and for that, the D makes all the difference -- and after all of that, still no flyer—because he wasn't, particularly, it was just that no one else could read him, not even Charlie.

He was still a little confused (though mostly amused) by that. He'd figured Charlie would have eliminated all other alternate (and erroneous) hypotheses by now, though he realized that premise was predicated on Charlie being aware his standing hypothesis was incorrect and that alternate hypotheses worthy of consideration were in existence. He wasn't entirely sure Charlie had quite reached that point yet, though with Charlie, it was always difficult to tell what he was truly unaware of and what he simply hadn't deemed worthy of his awareness.

Oh, yes. Charlie. "--an example of an erroneous conclusion," he was saying. "You cannot conclude that quantum uncertainty is a true and valid principle just because we lack the technology and sophisticated thinking--"

It wasn't as though he was waiting for Charlie to discard the incorrect hypotheses and arrive at the correct conclusion -- although he was, in a way. But waiting the way Larry thought of it -- on a truly cosmic scale—changed one's conception of time and anyway, he'd always been a patient person.

And it wasn't as though anything better was going to come along in the meantime. As far as he was concerned, Charlie was, well and truly, as good a match as he was ever going to find, gender notwithstanding -- and to be truthful, gender had been notwithstanding for some time now. He wasn't about to settle for anything less and if it turned out he'd waited away the rest of life, well, that wouldn't really have been a whole lot of time and even if it had been, Charlie was worth it.

"--necessary to gather the required information to postulate and test alternate hypotheses."

"Ah," Larry said, "but isn't that precisely what you're doing, Charles? You're putting forth the conclusion that luck only and fully accounts for the outcome of opening the box, having discarded the only other conclusion as erroneous but without putting forth any other hypotheses."

That was strange: Charlie looked honestly stumped. Larry wasn't sure why; he had that exact same thought each time they reached this particular juncture in the conversation—though it was possible, he supposed, that he'd never verbalized it. People often told him he did that commonly -- well, as often as people were able comment on one's unverbalized thoughts, at any rate.

"But," Charlie said, recovering with admirable speed, "I question your underlying assumption about my motives. I'm not saying that luck is definitively the sole accurate justification for the cat's outcome, but rather that it is _as justifiable_ as quantum uncertainty, thereby making quantum uncertainty only as valid as one finds luck to be valid."

Larry couldn't help but smile. "Mm, no. That's not what you were saying at all."

Charlie grinned. "But that's what I'm saying _now._ "

"Too late," Larry said. "I already know--" He still had his mail in his hand. Oh, right, looking for the poker tournament. It was right here, he'd just seen it. It was hard to miss, printed on bright pink paper that stood out like a sore thumb.

"Think about it," Charlie was saying. "It really is an inherently sensible mix..."

Given that he hadn't gone through his mail in the last three weeks, apparently, he hoped the tournament hadn't already come and gone. It was for charity -- and a new coffeemaker, which could be considered charity in and of itself, if one were feeling a bit silly and frivolous -- "Geek love," Charlie was saying and Larry absently replied, "The best kind." -- and it was fun and it would do both he and Charlie some good to get out and do some socializing, not to mention the bragging rights Larry would earn when--

Charlie was looking at him. Oddly.

"Charles?" Still. "Charles, are you all right? What--" He ran the last few conversational exchanges back from vague memory. _"It really is an inherently sensible mix," Charlie had said, "luck and physics, humanity and logic, social science and hard science. Geek love."_

 _"The best kind,"_ Larry had replied, and--

Oh.

 _Oh._ He hadn't expected Charlie to zero in on the correct choice of the aforementioned alternate and erroneous hypotheses quite so quickly, but Charlie was looking at him like maybe he understood something now he hadn't understood a moment ago.

"Geek love," Charlie reiterated.

"The best kind," Larry reaffirmed, a bit flustered, because it wasn't as though his opinion on that had changed in the last five seconds.

Charlie stared, seemingly stuck somewhere between the potential for a dawning realization and an intuitive leap of truly staggering proportions.

"After all," Larry continued, assuming more than feeling the blush creeping across his face, "when two people can interface on the purest level like that, what is there to--"

"Second purest."

"--second purest," he amended, then frowned and put the mail down to scratch at the back of his neck, even more flustered. "I forgot what I was saying."

"That's okay," Charlie said, a smile distantly related to the potential for a dawning realization sitting on his lips. "I was going to ask if you wanted to have lunch now, anyway. With, ...well. Me."

"Hmm. Yes," Larry said, still feeling a bit of conversational jet lag. "Yes, yes, lunch -- that'd be good. Good. Lunch."

As Charlie moved into his personal space -- from the personal zone (four feet to 18 inches, average for most Anglo Americans, that is, which they normally eschewed anyway) to the intimate zone (less than 18 inches, far less) -- and let his hand linger below Larry's shoulder as he ushered him out, he asked, "What were you looking for, anyway?"

"Huh? Oh, the flyer for the poker tournament. I wanted to--"

"I taped it to your door so you wouldn't lose it. But I'm not playing, so don't even ask."

"But Charles, it's for charity--"

"I'm not playing, Larry. You know how terrible I am."

"--and a new departmental coffeemaker for the player with the best hand. And the fact that you're a sore loser isn't reason enough to--"

"It's not that I'm a sore loser; I just don't _like_ to lose."

Larry waved a hand. "Meaningless distinction. And a new coffeemaker. One of those nice big ones with the--"

"I'm not playing."

"--spigots, like the soda dispensers."

"Larry, I'm not--"

"A spigot, Charles, how nice would a spigot be?"

"I'll buy you a coffeemaker," Charlie said.

"But it's not the same," Larry protested, even as Charlie pulled the flyer off the door and shut it behind them.


End file.
